Johnson leads softball team to championship
<p>Sandpoint softball player Dottie Johnson, pictured sixth from the right with the gray knee brace, helped lead her travelling softball team to the championship recently in Arizona. (Courtesy photo)</p>
SANDPOINT — Dottie Johnson has graced the earth for 62 years, and remarkably, has been playing softball for 56 of them. For the math impaired, the Sandpoint resident has been enjoying her favorite sport for 90 percent of the years she’s been alive.
So it should come as little surprise that she recently led a California-based team to the championship at the Arizona Senior Olympics in Phoenix. Johnson is her team’s pitcher, but she can also handle the bat, smacking two home runs in the tournament.
So what is it about softball that keeps Johnson coming back year after year, with no plans to quit anytime soon?
“The competition, the camaraderie. Those are my friends,” says Johnson, who plays in nearly a tournament a month on the traveling team. “We all have the same mentality of crazy. We all love to play, and have been playing forever.”
The win in Arizona qualifies the 60-65 year-old team for the national Senior Olympics in St. George, Utah later this year. Last season, Johnson’s team finished third, which merely wet her appetite for more this season.
“We’re hoping to win it all this year,” predicts Johnson. “I think we can.”
Johnson’s performance in Arizona is even more impressive when you consider she did it all with a knee that is basically bone on bone, and will require surgery soon. Hitting the home runs was the easy part, it was rounding the bases that presented the biggest challenge.
Most 60 somethings might consider hanging up the spikes after more than a half century of competitive action, but not Johnson.
“I’m going to have a knee replacement, take nine months off and hopefully come back,” says Johnson. “I want to play 65 and over.”
If you’ve driven by a baseball field in the past few years, chances are you’ve seen Johnson’s husband Jeff hard at work on the diamond. Jeff volunteers hundreds of hours every summer to keep the local baseball fields in immaculate shape, towing his grounds keeping trailer from field to field and sharing his expertise.
Dottie also volunteers her time to help keep the home book for the Sandpoint Bulldogs softball team. Her great attitude and hard work caught the eye of friend and fellow Community Assistance League member Dixie Stansell, who raves about Johnson’s gumption.
“Dottie is extremely dedicated to her team and her sport. She’s at home with very sore knees from two home runs in the champioship, but her concern is to pitch in the Olympics in the fall, sore knees or no. She’s a competitor,” describes Stansell. “She’s one of the nicest, most helpful women I know. She always steps up to the plate, so to speak, when a call goes out for help.”